Biochar has been known for many years as a soil enhancer. It contains highly porous, high carbon content material similar to the type of very dark, fertile anthropogenic soil found in the Amazon Basin known as Terra Preta. Terra Preta has very high charcoal content and is made from a mixture of charcoal, bone, manure, among other substances. Biochar is created by the pyrolysis of biomass, which generally involves heating and/or burning of organic matter, in a reduced oxygen environment, at a predetermined rate. Such heating and/or burning is stopped when the matter reaches a charcoal like stage. The highly porous material of biochar is perfectly suited to host beneficial microbes, retain nutrients, hold water, and act as a delivery system for a range of beneficial compounds suited to specific applications.
During the production of biochar, large portions of biochar fines or dust particles are created. Along with the loss of useful product, these dust particles can cause problematic, or even hazardous conditions for biochar manufacturing, packaging and in application, including in use through agricultural application equipment, in animal feed, or in application to compost. The various particle size distributions created during biochar manufacturing lead to distribution and application problems with equipment and cause the necessity of sizing equipment and costly capital expenditures. The low density of the biochar fines and dust particles also makes mixing of growth enhancers such as fertilizers or microbes difficult as it allows for settling, separation, and distribution problems.
Given the known benefits of biochar, a need remains for: (i) a means to produce biochar in such a way that it has consistent granular particle sizes and distributions and can meet application needs in commercial agriculture, animal feed or maintenance, and composting using standard equipment and (ii) a method to utilize residual biochar dust or biochar fines to create a product with consistent size and physical/chemical properties that can be uniformly distributed in large and small scale applications to have the highest positive impact in its application including but not limited to agriculture, animal feed or maintenance, and composting.